


If the Sky Turned into Stone

by aeli_kindara



Series: Supernatural Codas [15]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Daddy's blunt little instrument, Episode Tag, Episode: s15e02 Raising Hell, Gen, Getting Together, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, Season/Series 15, Team Free Will (Supernatural), struggling with free will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 18:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21085790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: Because there is this, at the core of it all.We are,said Cas,we are real,but Dean isn’t. He never has been. He’s always been an instrument to whoever’s nearest — Dad, for years. Michael. He is what they made him.





	If the Sky Turned into Stone

**Author's Note:**

> I'm naming all my fics after "God Was Never On Your Side" lyrics and you can't stop me.

If there’s one thing Sam should know by now, it’s that he can’t buckle half over from pain in the middle of a hunt without expecting a reckoning later on with his big brother.

There’s a lot they can’t count on anymore — a lot of their lives that’s written over, clouded in question marks. _ What was us, and what was Chuck? _But this, at least — this, Dean is sure of.

“Hey,” he says later, quiet in the din of the cafeteria. It’s full of refugees, cots shoved against the walls for dinner time; Dean’s not sure who and when arranged for there to be a dinner time, but he’s grateful for it. He pats Sam’s uninjured shoulder. “C’mere for a sec.”

Sam gives him a bemused look — _ yeah, nice try _ — and follows Dean out the doors, down the corridor. The classrooms are empty and dark. Some of them still have cots set up, a few discarded belongings — many of the evacuees have moved on to stay with family out of town until the danger is past.

Dean picks the third door, for no particular reason except that he likes the sombrero hanging over the lintel. It looks like a Spanish classroom. Brightly colored posters line the walls.

He ushers Sam inside and shuts the door behind them. His brother leans back on a table uncertainly, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows. “Dean —“

“All right, level with me,” Dean interrupts. “That shoulder’s not getting better.”

He fully expects an argument. He expects denial to flash across Sam’s face, excuses. Instead, Sam’s shoulders slump.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I guess not.”

Dean covers his surprise. “All right. Let’s take a look.”

“Dean, you won’t see —“ Sam starts, but he’s already acquiescing, shrugging out of his sleeve.

The mark on his shoulder looks as bad as it did earlier. Worse, maybe. It’s a dark dull color, nothing like a normal scab, and there’s a gold glint to it that keeps catching the corner of Dean’s eye. Sam inhales sharply when Dean runs a thumb over it — the texture is strangely smooth, like cooled lava — and for an instant he squeezes his eyes shut.

Dean stops dead. “Sam?”

“It’s nothing,” says Sam, quickly.

“Didn’t look like nothing.”

Sam avoids his eyes. Then he breathes out: a long, steady exhale. “I’ve been having — visions,” he says.

For a moment, Dean doesn’t quite hear him. It’s the last thing they need; this, on top of everything — and there’s an instant where it’s too much for his brain to take in. His jaw clenches; his ears go dead. Then time catches up to him, a roaring train, and he’s asking, “What, like — those visions from Lucifer? You don’t think —”

But Sam’s shaking his head. “More like premonitions.”

“Jesus.” Dean runs a hand over his face. “Jesus. Like you used to get when — were you gonna tell me this sometime, Sam?”

“Now,” Sam answers, voice neutral. And then: “I think they’re connected to the wound somehow. They tend to trigger when you touch it.”

“Great. Freaking great,” Dean mutters. He glances sharply at his brother. “Getting anything useful?”

Sam only shakes his head.

“You think they’re connected to Chuck?”

That prompts a sigh. Sam runs a hand through his hair, grimacing. “I don’t know — maybe? But then, last time I thought I was getting visions from God, I was pretty deeply wrong, so.”

“Maybe the visions will stop if the wound heals. Cas shoulda taken a look at it already.”

“He did,” Sam says quietly.

Dean double-takes. “He what?”

“He did. Couldn’t do anything about it.”

Abruptly, Dean’s furious.

It’s at nothing; it’s at everything. It’s at Cas. _ We are _ — as if people being real means a goddamn thing in the face of their lives being fake. As if _ we _ might be something — anything — more.

“Shoulda tried harder,” he mutters. “You up for some digging? Looks kinda like an infection — maybe we treat it like one.”

“You guys should talk,” says Sam, quietly.

They do talk. They _ did _ talk. There’s nothing more to say.

“Stay there,” Dean tells him. “I’m gonna get the wound kit from the car.”

He goes before Sam has a chance to say anything further.

\---

Debridement — the word — is kind of fun to say; Dean’s always thought so. Debridement, the process, is terrible no matter how you slice it.

Sam grits his teeth, but he turns down the leather strap to bite on. Dean remembers when his brother was a stone cold wimp, practically passed out every time Dean took him for his shots as a kid. When he was a baby, he used to _ scream. _ It’s weird that Dean kind of misses that.

“I’m all out of jokes,” he tells Sam. “Your turn.”

That gets the eyeroll and huff of laughter he’s looking for. But when Sam answers, it’s not a dumb knock-knock. “You remember the first time you ever did this?”

“What, tried to dig the melty lava god-juice outta your shoulder? It’s now, Sam. The first time is now.”

“No, I mean —” a stifled gasp of pain — “the first time you — used a wound kit. The first time you sewed Dad up, or yourself, or me.”

Dean sets down his scalpel in favor of some forceps. “No idea.”

“I remember mine.”

Jesus. It’s not the road Dean wants to go down, but if it’ll keep Sam distracted — “Yeah?”

“I was — thirteen.” He pauses for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut and breathing tightly — in, out. “That werewolf tore you up in Gadsden, remember? Dad wasn’t there, just me on my own, and you were all — concussed and thought you were _ hilarious. _ And I’m just sitting there trying to stitch up your stomach and terrified your intestines are gonna spill out all over my hands —”

“Woulda been pretty funny,” Dean puts in, bracing Sam’s shoulder so he can dig at a recalcitrant bit of wound tissue.

Sam makes a choked noise in his throat. When Dean eases off, he’s breathing hard — knuckles white where they’re clutching his own knee.

“Sam?” asks Dean, careful, and Sam looks up at him with a patented bitchface, the one that means _ keep going. _

So Dean tries. But he’s getting nowhere; the texture of the hole in Sam’s shoulder is something like an action figure that’s been melted in a microwave. Only harder — _ much _ harder.

Dean gives up when he breaks his scalpel.

He goes through the usual steps: cleaning the wound and dressing it. Sam stays quietly stoic, head low between his shoulders and eyes squeezed shut. But what progress Dean has made is already blistering over — turning dark-gold again, and sickly. “Any more visions?” he asks, when he’s done.

Sam shrugs, which Dean takes to mean _ yes, but I don’t want to talk about it. _ Then he says, “With the stitches thing, though —“

“Jesus, are we still on this?” Dean demands. His temper’s worn short — Cas and Jack and Mom and God and not sleeping and _ digging around in your little brother’s shoulder, _none of it’s good for the constitution.

But Sam ignores him. “I guess it’s — easier, in a way, thinking it’s all because of Chuck. That we grew up like that, I mean. Everything that’s happened since.”

He looks at Dean like he’s expecting an answer. Dean doesn’t know what to give him. He settles on turning away to start cleaning his tools. “Yeah, I guess.”

“‘Cause I mean,” continues Sam, shrugging his shirt back on, “it’s pretty fucking grim otherwise, isn’t it? I remember thinking that — way back then, with your blood all over my jeans. You must’ve thought it sometimes too — _ all _ the time. The whole question of _ why are our lives this way?” _

Dean goes still.

“And now — we know,” says Sam. There’s grit in his voice; fervor. “So I’ll take that. I’ll — if we can make it out of this fight — I’ll _ take _ that. It’ll make this whole thing, this whole _ lifetime, _ worthwhile.”

He talks like they’re out of the maze. He talks like they’ll be out of the maze, _ ever; _ like the maze isn’t built into the very fabric of who they are.

“I didn’t.” It takes Dean a moment to realize the voice is his own. “I didn’t — think like that as a kid.” Sam’s staring at him, so he gestures summarily. “The _ why are our lives this way _ thing.”

Sam’s watching him with his eyebrows knit together, all careful curiosity. “Really? Cause our lives were — _ pretty dark, _ Dean. You didn’t ever look around at all the kids with normal families, all the people who lost someone and moved on with their lives and think — _ why not us?” _

There’s a part of Dean’s gut that’s in free fall. Dropping through the years, the memories, all the things he swallowed: _ It’s normal. I’m fine. I’m proud; wouldn’t want to leave Dad on his own in this. Wouldn’t want to be a helpless civilian anyway — _

He realizes he’s staring, eyes unfocused, into the wall. He glances quickly back at Sam, then away. “Nah. Not til later.”

“When?” Sam asks.

_ When? _

When Dad died and Sam died and Dean lived a year in the shadow of Hell. When he carried around the knowledge — _ you’ll have to save your brother. And if you can’t, you’ll have to kill him. _When a djinn gave him, briefly, a life of his own — as a deadbeat fuck-up, sure, but with family who were happy and healthy and safe and didn’t need him for a goddamn thing.

Not in Hell — it never crossed his mind down there. _ Why me? _ But after — _ you don’t think you deserve to be saved — _

He didn’t. He doesn’t. He never has.

“I dunno, man,” he says, but the words sound weak, even to his own ears.

Because there is this, at the core of it all. _ We are, _ said Cas, _ we are real, _ but Dean isn’t. He never has been. He’s always been an instrument to whoever’s nearest — Dad, for years. Michael. He is what they made him.

And if Chuck is behind it all —

That means _ none _ of Dean’s life was a free one. Not even the parts that felt like his own. Not even —

“Sammy,” says a voice, and the voice is shaking, and the voice is his own. “Can I ask you something?”

Sam’s looking at him, blinking, open curiosity written across his face. “Shoot.”

Dean opens his mouth. His throat makes no sound.

He swallows compulsively, ducking his head. His eyes are stinging. _ Jesus. _ He swipes at them, furious, and Sam just sits there — all patient puppy-dog interest.

Dean glances at him once more, then the wall. The ceiling — he stops just short of having to thumb away another well of tears from his eyes. He looks down at his hands. Clamps them, one over the other.

He says, “You know how the demons joke, sometimes — about me and Cas?”

Sam blinks. “Sure. Hell tabloids; _joined at the everything, _right?”

Dean snorts. He can’t help himself; it’s abrupt and loud and choked with snot, a bray like he’s the _ burro _ on the poster on the wall. His ribs spasm, once, twice — he can’t laugh. If he laughs he’s going to cry.

“Wait,” says Sam, and at least that’s shock written across his face. “You’re not —?”

It takes Dean a moment to realize what he’s asking. “_No, _Jesus — it’s not like that.”

Only it is like that. Or Dean wishes it were, somewhere in the clockwork core of him — it feels like a truth that lives in his diaphragm. Pushes his breath in — out. In — out. Thuds with the beat of his heart.

_ Cas. Cas. Cas. _

“It’s just,” he says, “what if God just — thought it would be funny? To make me fall in love with a fucking angel?”

The words are out of him, and he can’t take them back.

He can’t take them back.

Sam is staring at him. Like he doesn’t know him at all, which sounds about right. Like someone has whisked his brother away and replaced him with some kind of bisexual wing-slut, which also isn’t wrong, and maybe he should have at least told Sammy about the whole sex-with-guys thing once or twice before, but — fuck, who’s to say that’s real, either? Who’s to say a _ goddamn thing _ Dean has ever loved was ever his at all?

Then he realizes that Sam’s not staring at him at all. He’s staring past him — expression full of trepidation. He’s staring at the door.

Just outside the window, fist raised comically in what would have been a knock, is Cas, looking about as sick to his stomach as Dean feels.

\---

“I’ll — just,” says Sam.

He gathers his things. He’s moving stiffly, shoulder clearly hurting him — Dean’s fault. He tried to make things better, and he only made them worse.

Cas is still standing at the door, his face horrifically blank. He’s lowered his hand, at least. His trench coat slumps off his shoulders; it looks defeated. Unwilling.

Dean’s fucking ascribing emotions to clothing now.

Sam turns the doorknob, hesitates, then puts a hand on Cas’s back and awkwardly shove-pulls him inside. He steps around him, fumbling again with the door. “_Talk _to each other,” he says through the gap in the door, and then he closes it with a click.

Cas stands there, swaying slightly. Dean can’t take it; he turns away. Takes three quick steps toward the window. “I don’t know how much you heard,” he says roughly, “but you don’t understand —“

“I think I understand perfectly.” Cas’s voice is as stiff as his shoulders. “You feel something you don’t want to feel.”

The words reach directly into Dean’s chest. They twist his heart upside down, brutal. “It’s not about what I _ want,” _ he answers, hating himself. “It’s —“

“Why not?” Cas interrupts.

“Why should it be?” Dean fires back, spinning to face him. “Why the hell would I — why would you — _ trust _ that? I mean after everything, Cas, after — you _ know _what he’s fucking done to us.”

“Oh,” says Cas, and his eyes are sparking now with muted fury, “_I _ know. I know better than you could possibly — you say I’ve been getting scammed forever? Well, I have. A thousand times over. I know what it’s like better than — better than _ anyone. _Who else are you going to trust to tell Chuck’s lies from the truth?”

Cas standing over him, face cold. Fist dark with Dean’s blood. His blade in his hand.

Cas came back from brainwashing, for Dean. Time and time again, Dean’s worked out, and yeah, that means something — yes, it turns Dean’s lungs to lead and squeezes all the air from his chest — but that could have been Chuck, too. Chuck pulling the strings. Leaning in close to watch his favorite show.

He was probably watching when Dean prayed to him. When Cas was gone and Mom was gone and Dean wanted to drive his Baby directly off the edge of the parking lot and into the ocean — Chuck was watching then.

Chuck was watching when Dean learned how he’d failed — back in the Pit. That he’d been weak where his father was strong. That he’d doomed the world.

And he was watching when Dean told Cas, his insides about as wrecked and miserable as they feel right now — _ I guess I’m not the man either of our fathers wanted me to be. _

That should be proof positive. To him, to Cas, to anyone else who cares. No way Cas would’ve kept hanging around Dean’s pathetic ass, if he’d had any kind of a choice.

“_Dean,_” says Cas.

He’s standing directly in front of him. He must have moved, while Dean’s heart froze in his chest. He reaches out — he’s close enough now to touch.

“I don’t,” Dean tries, “I don’t know how you can trust me at all, when you — you’ve _ seen _ what I’m like. I’ve always been someone’s tool. _ Always. _ My Dad’s, or Michael’s, or — Alastair’s, and — it only makes sense. That it was Chuck all along. There’s no such thing as _ me, _Cas, just a bunch of shit he thought would be fucking hilarious to read.”

But Cas doesn’t drop his hand. It hovers in the air between them, then settles gently into Dean’s shoulder — like that’s where it’s always belonged.

“You forget,” says Cas, “that I know you.”

Dean shudders. Cas’s touch feels like a balm; like the rest of him is a raw and screaming nerve, but that one small place is at peace. He wants to press his face into Cas’s neck. He wants to line his fingers up with Cas’s ribs and catch Cas’s mouth with his mouth and touch him and keep touching him until there isn’t a single part of Dean’s body or soul that knows what it is to feel alone.

“I _ know _ how it was down there.” Cas’s palm pressed flat to his chest, thumb at the place where Dean’s clavicles join — it makes his pulse jump in his throat. “I know how it was growing up — the things you believed and the times when you didn’t. The parts of your life you protected Sam from. The ones you kept sacred, just for yourself.”

Dean can’t take Cas’s gaze; he turns his head. Cas’s knuckles are there, brushing his mouth.

“I know how you’ve grown — all the impossible horrors you’ve come back from.” His touch grazes the back of Dean’s neck, where the short hair feathers away, and Dean’s seized by a full-body shiver. “I know how you’ve begun, finally, to believe in the things you want. To trust yourself.”

It’s too much. It’s too little. If Cas is going to do this, he needs to — shove Dean up against a wall. He needs to force Dean to his knees.

“I’m asking you not to stop. Not for this. Not for _ him._” Cas’s voice is shaking, and his hand cups Dean’s face. One of his fingers is tucked behind Dean’s earlobe. His thumb strokes the line of Dean’s cheekbone. “I’m asking you to — trust _ me, _ if you can’t trust yourself. Trust what _ I _know. You are whole, Dean. You are real. I know you. Down to the bottom of your soul.”

_ Please stop, _says every muscle in Dean’s body. He’s going to collapse. He’s going to explode.

“Yeah,” he jokes weakly, “but do you know about Rhonda Hurley?”

Cas smiles.

That, Dean will remember, is when his defenses give in.

They don’t give in so much as disintegrate. And his chest is a flood; of feeling, of wanting, of —

“I know about Rhonda Hurley,” Cas says gravely.

Dean kisses him.

It’s easy to do — easier than he ever could imagine. Cas’s face is _ right there; _ the front of his trenchcoat bunches in Dean’s fist. He’s willing, mouth opening slick and eager, fingers sliding through Dean’s hair to cup the back of his head. He’s shaking, pressing Dean finally back into the window — the blinds creak and snap in protest, cords dancing — and tugging at his clothes. Dean makes a sound he doesn’t recognize and fumbles to help Cas with the buttons on his shirt.

“When you said,” he gasps into Cas’s mouth, “_we are _ real — I didn’t know — if you meant —”

Cas bites his earlobe. Dean almost shouts. Cas’s hands are on his hips, tugging his belt loops, shoving impatiently past the waistband of his jeans.

“I meant you are real,” he says, breath hot on Dean’s ear, the skin of his neck. “And I am real. And if we both are real — how could I not —”

Dean remembers, as if from a shadow of his life, a hand on his shoulder. White fire burning him up, consuming his doubts. Consuming his fears. Sweeping through all the dark corners of him and leaving him whole — clean. Scrabbling insensate for freedom in a cheap pine box.

“Thank you,” he mumbles into Castiel’s kiss. He’s already half embarrassed of the words as they come out.

But Cas pulls back. His hands are on Dean’s skin, inside his shirt; moving as though they can’t stop. His face is serious. Then he smiles.

“You taught me free will once,” he tells Dean. He frees one hand and catches Dean’s in it — raises Dean’s fingers to his lips. He kisses them, one, then another. “Let me return the favor.”

There are questions left unanswered. Pieces of them both that are still too raw and splintered to touch — Jack’s death. Mom’s. The scream inside Dean still feels like it might devour the world if he lets it out.

But those things are for later. “Okay,” says Dean, and pulls Cas back in close.

\---

When they return to the group, Sam and Rowena are talking quietly, huddled together over a book. Belphegor lounges watching them, but when Dean and Cas round the corner, he cranes his neck in interest — then grins, a slow delight that creeps up his face.

Dean’s mouth feels dry. He checked his hair three times in the mirror. But he can’t do anything about his swollen lips, about the spots of color high on his cheeks.

Rowena looks up next, just as Cas’s hand touches the small of Dean’s back. Dean jumps, slightly. Rowena’s eyebrows lift sky-high. She opens her mouth.

“Hey,” says Sam, before she can speak. He barely glances up; no double-take, no knowing smile. “Come look at this — we think we have an idea to close the hellmouth down.”

Dean obeys, face set, moving to sit by his brother. Cas slides into a spot across the table — next to Rowena, as far as he can get from Belphegor.

Sam claps a hand to Dean’s shoulder. He squeezes, for an instant — as if to say _ I’m proud of you. _ As if to say, _ We got this. I got your back. _

“So get this,” he begins, turning the pages, and starts to explain the plan.

**Author's Note:**

> Rebloggable on [tumblr](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/188448377059/if-the-sky-turned-into-stone-36k-t-1502-coda) should you so please!


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